
Penelope’s Bones
A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It
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Narrated by:
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Emily Hauser
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By:
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Emily Hauser
About this listen
This is an audiobook version of this book.
Weaving together literary and archaeological evidence, Emily Hauser illuminates the rich, intriguing lives of the real women behind Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in the past three millennia. But these are not just tales about heroic men. There are scores of women as well—complex, fascinating women whose stories have gone unexplored for far too long.
In Penelope’s Bones, award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser pieces together compelling evidence from archaeological excavations and scientific discoveries to unearth the richly textured lives of women in Bronze Age Greece—the era of Homer’s heroes. Here, for the first time, we come to understand the everyday lives and experiences of the real women who stand behind the legends of Helen, Briseis, Cassandra, Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso, Penelope, and more. In this captivating journey through Homer’s world, Hauser explains era-defining discoveries, such as the excavation of Troy and the decipherment of Linear B tablets that reveal thousands of captive women and their children; more recent finds like the tomb of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos, whose tomb contents challenge traditional gender attributes; DNA evidence showing that groups of warriors buried near the Black Sea with their weapons and steeds were, in fact, Amazon-like female fighters; a prehistoric dye workshop on Crete that casts fresh light on “women’s work” of dyeing, spinning, and weaving textiles; and a superbly preserved shipwreck off the coast of Turkey whose contents tell of the economic and diplomatic networks crisscrossing the Bronze Age Mediterranean.
Essential for fans of Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes, this riveting new history brings to life the women of the Bronze Age Aegean as never before, offering a groundbreaking reassessment of the ancient world.
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Critic reviews
“From the shadowy recesses of myth and epic poetry, step forth a host of women who once lived. A stirring, enlightening and fascinating exploration of the real lives of women written with expert knowledge, wit, and poetic flair. A true pleasure for the reader to lose themselves in.”—Jennifer Saint, author of Elektra
“A brilliant riposte to a millennia-old dilemma. Fascinating, enthralling, and insightful—Penelope’s Bones helps to recolor the world of epic for us for good!”—Michael Scott, author of X Marks the Spot: The Story of Archaeology in Eight Extraordinary Discoveries
“A timely reminder of how much has been left out of traditional myth and storytelling. Hauser deftly plumbs the depths of Greek myth to re-center the lives of mythical women.”—Joel Christensen, author of Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things
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The Prince of Pirates: A Tale of Love, Loss, and Lots O’Loot is a captivating historical fiction novel that weaves a thrilling narrative around the legendary pirate Black Sam Bellamy, his unconventional young lover Maria Hallett, and the infamous ship, The Whydah Gally.
By: E.H. Casteele
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Craze
- By: Margaret Vandenburg
- Narrated by: Mia Hutchinson-Shaw
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Fresh off the boat from Roaring Twenties Paris, Henrietta “Henri” Adams lands in New York in the midst of the Queer Craze that is taking the city by storm. An art critic by day and lady lover by night, she ventures into the clandestine worlds of speakeasies and drag balls, which free her from the tyranny of the gender binary. Fun-loving slummers crash the party, flocking to see queer performers at the Astor Hotel and the Cotton Club. Broadway stars rub elbows with Harlem Renaissance luminaries at the Hamilton Lodge Masquerade Ball. But the revelry can't last forever.
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Where We Land
- A Pilot's Reflections at Altitude
- By: Donald Osborn, Anna Henkens Schmidt
- Narrated by: Charles Igel
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Take off on an unforgettable journey with Donald Osborn, a born storyteller whose life plays out like an adventure across the skies. From his humble beginnings in western Nebraska to navigating the unpredictable world of commercial aviation, Osborn’s career soars from flight instructing to the high-stakes realities of airline life.
By: Donald Osborn, and others
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Burning Down the House
- Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock
- By: Jonathan Gould
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 17 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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“Psycho Killer.” “Take Me to the River.” “Road to Nowhere.” Few artists have had the lasting impact and relevance of Talking Heads. One of the foundational bands of downtown New York’s 1970s music scene, Talking Heads have endured as a musical and cultural force for decades, their unique brand of transcendent, experimental rock a lingering influence on popular music—despite having disbanded over thirty years ago. Now on the 50th anniversary of the band’s formation, acclaimed music biographer and contributor to The New Yorker Jonathan Gould offers the definitive story of Talking Heads.
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Encyclopedic overview of the Heads
- By Greg Coogan on 06-28-25
By: Jonathan Gould
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Threads of Empire
- A History of the World in Twelve Carpets
- By: Dorothy Armstrong
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Threads of Empire is a spellbinding look at the history of the world through the stories of twelve carpets. Beautiful, sensuous, and enigmatic, great carpets follow power. Emperors, shahs, sultans, and samurai crave them as symbols of earthly domination. Shamans and priests desire them to evoke the spiritual realm. The world's 1% hunger after them as displays of extreme status.
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The Genius Myth
- A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea
- By: Helen Lewis
- Narrated by: Helen Lewis
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate. In The Genius Myth, Helen Lewis unearths how this one word has shaped (and distorted) our ideas of success and achievement. Ultimately, argues Lewis, the modern idea of genius—a single preternaturally gifted individual, usually white and male, exempt from social niceties and sometimes even the law—has run its course.
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Author has many opinions, not hesitant to share them
- By Hawaiian 54 on 06-28-25
By: Helen Lewis
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Valhalla Boys
- Marine Recon Sniper in Iraq
- By: Brennan Morton
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2006, the shock and awe campaign of securing the major cities had ended, and the Iraq War had moved into an alien phase for the operators of Black Flag One. With their motto “swift, silent, deadly,” the Marine operators of 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion were trained for unconventional warfare but they were tasked with holding and securing swathes of the country, facing Insurgents who were adapting their tactics to kill as many Coalition soldiers as possible using IEDs.
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Its military, but READS like a great novel
- By Brennan Morton on 06-17-25
By: Brennan Morton
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Allies at War
- How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World
- By: Tim Bouverie
- Narrated by: Tim Bouverie
- Length: 25 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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After the fall of France in June 1940, all that stood between Adolf Hitler and total victory was a narrow stretch of water and the defiance of the British people. Desperate for allies, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the conflict, drive the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany apart, and persuade neutral countries to resist German domination. By early 1942, after the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British-Soviet-American alliance was in place.
By: Tim Bouverie
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The Library of Ancient Wisdom
- Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World
- By: Selena Wisnom
- Narrated by: Catherine Bailey
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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The library of Ashurbanipal, Assyria’s last great king, held an astonishing collection at the forefront of knowledge in its day, from ancient traditions in religion and literature to the latest developments in magic and medicine. When the Assyrian empire fell, the library burned to the ground, and its contents, clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform writing, lay buried for thousands of years until a team of Victorian archaeologists discovered the remnants in modern-day Iraq. The clay had baked and hardened; the very fire that consumed the library had helped its texts to survive for millennia.
By: Selena Wisnom
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Epic of the Earth
- Reading Homer's "Iliad" in the Fight for a Dying World
- By: Edith Hall
- Narrated by: Edith Hall
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The roots of today's environmental catastrophe run deep into humanity's past. Through this unprecedented reading of Homer's Iliad, the award-winning classicist Edith Hall examines how this foundational text both documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the dangers posed by the destruction of the natural landscape. Underlying Homer's account of brutal military operations, alliances, and cataclysmic struggle is a palpable understanding that the direction in which humanity was headed could create a world that was uninhabitable.
By: Edith Hall
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American Maccabee
- Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews
- By: Andrew Porwancher
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A scion of the Protestant elite, Theodore Roosevelt was an unlikely ally of the waves of impoverished Jewish newcomers who crowded the docks at Ellis Island. Yet from his earliest years he forged ties with Jews never before witnessed in a president. American Maccabee traces Roosevelt's deep connection with the Jewish people at every step of his dazzling ascent. But it also reveals a man of contradictions whose checkered approach to Jewish issues was no less conflicted than the nation he led.